Plagiarism Today - Latest Comments in Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Solomon — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:19:36 -0000

What concerns me about Photobucket, less than the issues with plagiarism, is that they tend to remove images without notice. Plus they remove all information on that image so you never know what or why they removed an image. They just randomly remove stuff and leave an ugly Photobucket icon to let you know what kind of bastards they are. Their censorship rules are very large and too rigid.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Monica Handy — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:07:52 -0000

How do you get permission from the artist, in order to use their work?

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:10:23 -0000

Regarding the printing issue, I agree that any decent home printer or even Walgreens can do a respectable job, the difference though is that, by using Qoop and Photobucket, those sites are profiting from the infringement. You can't stop local printing, that is very true, but there is no reason for Qoop and Photobucket to turn a direct profit selling infringing prints, where at least printer makers earn their money selling printers.

The fingerprinting issue has been licked elsewhere. When a company like Tineye, which is a tiny fraction the size of PhotoBucket and Fox can do very good fingerpriting, even when images are editied, it defeats that argument. See also PicScout for this one.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Robert — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:46:23 -0000

I'd like to comment about the technical measures you are proposing.

Firstly the printing issue, while I feel your pain I would note that a modern colour laser eg:
http://www.lexmark.com/lexm...
is very cheap and able to produce prints that an untrained eye will not be able to distinguish from professional prints. And a print that is "good enough" can often be produced from almost any inkjet printer.
Because of this I would say a better solution to this issue would be notification, so the uploader is notified if the image is passed (directly) to the printing option. They can obviously do nothing about indirect or local printing.

As for fingerprinting, Marcus said it a year ago, it's silly, just because something exists for video does not mean that the same technique will be effective for a still image. The simplest reason is that it's a lot easier to do a minor edit to an image than it is to a video.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:03:52 -0000

It's even more annoying when one factors in the PB sells prints and so forth of images in their galleries. Scary stuff...

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Cara — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:06:30 -0000

okay, first deviantArt is NOT connected to Photobucked. what they upload is not put on Photobucket right away. not until an art thief comes along and illegally puts it up on Photobucket. also, if you buy something with a watermark, the print wouldn't have it (I think)
that clear things up?

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Cara — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:58:08 -0000

i agree completely. people constantly steal art from real art sites and post it without permission. it's really annoying.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:55:54 -0000

dA is not related to PB in any way. What happens is that PB users seem to routinely put up dA images without permission. That is where the problem begins.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Walter — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 01:57:07 -0000

Wait, so www.deviantart.comis connected with Photobucket. So anything an artist puts on there will be on Photobucket as well. It is nice that deviantart has watermark options but do they let users know that their works can end up being printed on Photobucket? What if you want to sell prints on deviantart would'nt the watermark get in the way? Anyone know?

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

doug — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:26:19 -0000

ahhh...photobucket and myspace...the last bastions of censorship in america

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

PB User — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:23:23 -0000

This is ridiculous. Even "IF" PhotoBucket will change their policy to soften the problems every artist encounter with, it WILL NOT stop the problem, (artists are not the first on the list, how about music, movies, and other media). Next day another similar to PB site will be run out of Zair, Chad, or Malasia. So that petion is DEAD!!!

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:04:20 -0000

While I agree that it is possible to print an image from anywhere through any means, what is unnerving is that A) Photobucket is actively profiting from said printing of likely infringing issues B) That they are providing commercial-quality printing. Those are my biggest issues.

On that note though, your solution sounds a great deal like the "take down stay down" system I mentioned in the article. They use it actively on Myspace for videos just not on PB for images. I agree it won't catch everything but it is a step in the right direction.

Thank you for your feedback!

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

jett — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:07:09 -0000

I don't see how whether this was enabled or not how it would affect the printing of any digital image. First off, how hard is it even if it was disabled, to copy and paste the image into your own account just for the purpose of printing. There is no "fool-proof" solution to this when your picture is on any site. What could work for some people who have expessed concern over their media being "stolen" and uploaded to this site, if photobucket added some server side tracking of images and comparing them to a no-allow list, although writing something like this obvioulsy would be quite hard to catch all instances. Although as a fellow artist I take a more of an "open source" approach, I can see how this would be quite inconvenient for people who are trying to make some cash off of your art. My best of luck to you.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:18:26 -0000

I'll definitely take a look, thank you for the heads up!

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Anon — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:06:11 -0000

You should take a look at Piczo. They use many artists work without their permission and redistribute it to fellow Piczo users or make the artwork available for redistribution. Most artists work on Piczo has been lifted from reputable sites, the images turned in to tubes and reused without having purchased a license.

Piczo work on the theory of fair use but if complaints are made about a particular image, they will take it down but is immediately uploaded again by the owner of the website.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:58:10 -0000

I'm glad that it makes sense to you and seems fitting. Hopefully we can get this implemented! Thank you for your suppot.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Katy A. — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:33:04 -0000

I know the time that visual artists put into their works and everyday I see that someone is being ripped off or their works displayed on another site, I could not agree more with this solution. Maybe it will teach people to respect what is not theirs and to have the decency to request the things they want rather than stealing them. It's also true that photobucket is inadvertently making money from prints of stolen images, This take Down, Stay Down system seems to be a logical and successful solution to this issue at hand, so why not handle it in this manner? IThis system makes perfect sense to me ...

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

chubs191 — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:53:14 -0000

This is exactly the reason why I don't feel comfortable with uploading my newer works online. I'd like to sell my stuff, but if anyone can just take my work and print it out, then that's too much of a risk. It's always said that copying is the greatest form of flattery, but plagiarism isn't.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Mayra — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:10:14 -0000

Thank you Jonathan:

I checked both of those sites and they're not what I am envisioning. For instance you need to get invited to join Phototrade. You see the problem that we really have is that people are more concerned about protecting their work than of making a successful and viable bussiness of their work. And the people who have the technology are not thinking about the rights of the artists, but on how to attract millions of members in advertising dollars. No one should profit from somebody else's work, but to think that you can control this in any way with technology such as the internet is futile. What ends up happening is that artists end up getting their work stolen and making no money anyway. We should all have learned from the music industry's failure to take appropriate action to prevent the loss of millions in revenue from record sales. Once you get people used to not paying for something, it is very difficult to change that mindset, but you know it can be done because water is free and people still pay for it even when their own tap water is cleaner than what they're buying at the store.

Going after Photobucket is not going to change anything. Photobucket is a cyberspace playpen for people. It was never meant for for professional or commercial use. What needs to be done is to develop a service that does work and where everybody is benefiting. I believe that it can be done, but the mindset needs to change and someone with resources who cares about doing what is right to step up to the plate.

Thanks for your help.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:10:20 -0000

Mayra: I would take a look at Divshare for embedding and Photrade for marketing and selling.

Hope that helps!

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Mayra — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:24:36 -0000

I think that photobucket is a brilliant concept that could have been a marketing haven for artists and photographers. The site could of been arranged by artists where the works would appear for people to use. The images should all be small enough to view but not large enough to use commercially. All web resolution so that they can only be used for the web. I am sure that artists and photographers have plenty of images stored somewhere they are not using. Why not use them for marketing. I'm a blogger and I do not advertise on my blog, so I am not profiting from any of the images I use from photobucket on my blog. I would very much like to give credit to whomever the image belongs to, but that info is not available. All I can credit is photobucket and I do.

Bloggers need a site they can join where they pay a membership to use images for their blogs. I don't know why artists and photographers have not done this. Why haven't artists and photographers approached for example wordpress to provide such service for their millions of members. As great as photobucket is, there's a lot of stuff that I don't care to look at in addition to being very time consuming to go through tons of stuff I don't want. I think that there is a great opportunity being missed here not only by photobucket, but the artists and photographers themselves.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Lynne — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:58:39 -0000

There should be a way for photographers to give permission to someone who would like to use a photo on a blog or website, with the photographer's knowledge. And a copyright notice, but NOT to make money on the picture. Ever.
Lynne

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jay Dunn — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:57:38 -0000

I totally agree... it's so frustrating to have so many talented artists that are trying to make a living off of what they do get ripped by those who upload their stuff to sites like Photobucket or even printing them out themselves... I agree with everyone. There should be a function where you can disable the 'Buy Prints' thing, because for one, it's not Photobucket's art and they have no right to be selling prints of someone's art that they have no permission to sell.

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:40:19 -0000

@Edward -
If it does happen, let me know if I can help. I'll gladly do what I can!

Re: Artists Express Concern Over PhotoBucket

Jonathan Bailey — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:40:19 -0000

@Edward -
If it does happen, let me know if I can help. I&#039ll gladly do what I can!